Published in 1932, The Brave New World depicts a world where fertility is a nuisance, relationships a superficial, and a World State controls the globe. Huxley imagined a world full of science and technology run wild. The population is drugged to always feel good and to never think to deeply. This is a book for the later years of high school as the topics are graphic and intense and there is sexuality. Excellent novel of discussing philosophy. This is a controversial book and has been on the ALA Most Challenged list since at least 1990. It is also on multiple "Must Read" lists and was #15 on the Waterstone List.

Hey, I'm always tardy to the party but I made it. BNW is the first of many great dystopias which continues to have resonance and power today. Eerie. Some of the assumptions or predictions (test tube babies) made have become a reality. It's a great read and well worth recommending. ( )

I hadn't read it since I was a teenager, and had forgotten much of it.

One thing I'd forgotten was how convincingly written the Controller's arguments are (or maybe I am just older now, and more reactionary) Stability... Wheels must turn steady, but cannot turn unattended. There must be men to tend them, men as steady as the wheels upon their axles, sane men, obedient men, stable in contentment. Crying... how can then tend the wheels? And if they cannot tend the wheels... The corpses of thousand thousand thousand men and women would be hard to bury or burn...

I like to think about dystopias as exaggerated pictures of what the author was worried about. Brave New World is a dystopia against comfort and getting what you want and being content with your lot. It's making the case that the things that make the human condition meaningful are also the things that make it hurt. The idea that happiness isn't the greatest goal, and there is something further - truth, beauty, love - something harder and less comfortable.

I'd forgotten how much it was about sex. The idea that anyone can sleep with anyone whenever they want, childishly, and so there is no space left to have a meaningful relationship, or to have complex feelings. The noble savage ideas about marriage for life contrasted with this. The way he wants Lenina, and hates himself for wanting Lenina

It's definitely a young man's book. The author's vision - 'I want a Nobel Savage bought up away from the culture, to cast light on how deficient it is. But I want him to speak in shakespeare quotes, because that's Really Cool, and Shakespeare is a powerful exemplar of what the civilised culture has lost' - is bold and powerful, but doesn't actually hold up to a lot of world building scrutiny.

Anyway, if you want a powerful book about 'what's the point of life, and relationships, and what do we lose if we settle for bland contentment' this is a classic for a reason. ( )

It has remained for Aldous Huxley to build the Utopia to end Utopias-or such Utopias as go to mechanics for their inspiration, at any rate. He has satirized the imminent spiritual trustification of mankind, and has made rowdy and impertinent sport of the World State whose motto shall be Community, Identity, Stability.

Wikipedia in English (2)

A fantasy of the future which sheds a blazing, critical light on the present - considered to be Aldous Huxley’s most enduring masterpiece.

Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone harbouring an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservations where the old, imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his distress…

"Community, Identity, Stability" is the motto of Aldous Huxley's utopian World State. Here everyone consumes daily grams of soma, to fight depression, babies are born in laboratories, and the most popular form of entertainment is a "Feelie," a movie that stimulates the senses of sight, hearing, and touch. Though there is no violence and everyone is provided for, Bernard Marx feels something is missing and senses his relationship with a young women has the potential to be much more than the confines of their existence allow. Huxley foreshadowed many of the practices and gadgets we take for granted today--let's hope the sterility and absence of individuality he predicted aren't yet to come.

A fantasy of the future that sheds a blazing critical light on the present--considered to be Aldous Huxley's most enduring masterpiece. Mr. Huxley is eloquent in his declaration of an artist's faith in man, and it is his eloquence, bitter in attack, noble in defense, that, when one has closed the book, one remembers. A Fantastic racy narrative, full of much excellent satire and literary horseplay. It is as sparkling, provocative, as brilliant, in the appropriate sense, as impressive ads the day it was published. This is in part because its prophetic voice has remained surprisingly contemporary, both in its particular forecasts and in its general tone of semiserious alarm. But it is much more because the book succeeds as a work of art. This is surely Huxley's best book.… (more)